Paint It, Black
by SolasVioletta
Summary: A night of stolen passion while handcuffed to the stairs in a dark Capitol basement. Real or not real? Find out by following post-hijacked Peeta on an AU adventure during and after the fall of the Capitol.
1. Real or Not Real?

_This little piece is an AU exploration of the dichotomy in post-hijacked Peeta's psyche in relation to Katniss. Who am I kidding? This is mostly smutty naughtiness. Who can resist a chained up Peeta in Tigress' basement in the Capitol? Avert your eyes elsewhere if you're not into that, or you're too young to indulge. Do hope you enjoy!_

_I own nothing but my own typos and other errors, both factual and grammatical._

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**Part 1 - Real/Not Real**

Rage. Burning, head-on-fire rage. A lot of the time, I **_hate _**Katniss Everdeen. Not a popular emotion to have lately, unless you happen to be President Snow or one of his minions, one of his mutts. Come to think of it, I guess I am a former mutt of the Capitol, though former is a rather fine distinction. Well, considering I'm now on the side of the rebel resistance, and supposedly fighting along-side Katniss, this makes my violent urges to wrap my hands tightly and irrevocably around her neck more than a little inconvenient for everybody, especially me, the guy who's supposedly loved her for most of his life. What a sap. Yeah, right now I really hate her. Almost as much as I hate myself. I guess what I really hate are the memories I have of Katniss- Even more than I hate the hazy memories of my mom beating me up side the head for burning the bread at our bakery back in our district so long ago, feeling helplessly infuriated to the point of nausea. Mom's little bits of humiliation were _nothing_ when compared with what I suffer with my terrifying, sometimes shameful remembrances that Katniss, aka the Mockingjay, bring to my addled mind. I clench my jaw to keep from screaming obscenities at her, as I look across the dim room to where she is currently huddled with her loyal, rebel lapdogs in our hide-out in a dank basement in the Capitol within spitting distance of the President's Mansion. I almost tremble with loathing as I remember BH Peeta, as in: before hijacking Peeta, fawning and scraping while he declares his undying devotion to the love his life, the girl on fire.

Jolted violently back to the present moment, I see Gale gazing at her with such fucking reverence- just as I used to in those BH Peeta videos I've seen. I watch with slitted eyes as Katniss leans over to shoot Gale, the poor bastard, full of pain medication in order to stitch up the wounds he got from the horrific Capitol Mutts he recently so valiantly fought off to protect her. He seems to have completely forgotten the important detail that she was the one who led him into his current state of injury and almost certain impending death in the first place. It's so easy to forget shit like that around her.

Gale's not the only one with a case of selective memory and hero worship around here. Sickening- all of them falling over themselves for her favor despite the fact that she's led them to be cowering like rats in a basement, if you can call this furry hell that. Blech. Allow me to vomit on their rebel-issue combat boots. What really sucks is the ego-smashing realization that _I _was this gullible back in the day- in the arena, when I willingly followed her and repeatedly laid down my life for her as blindly as these losers.

So, here I am most likely in the process of following Katniss to my doom yet _again_, currently huddled in some weird-assed tiger lady's basement waiting for the Capitol's white uniformed guards to rush in and slaughter us all at any moment. One important difference this time though... I tug at the metal restraints they've clasped around my wrists because I can't be trusted, my skin now raw and bleeding. For a few giddy moments, I wish for sweet homicidal release. My hands around Katniss' throat just one more time. She couldn't hurt me so much if she were dead. I'd finally be free like those damn birds she loves so much. Soaring over her. Untouchable. No more pain, no more fear, no more Katniss. No more Peeta.

Twenty minutes later I'm fighting against thinking this even as she comes over to me to check on me and treat my wounds. She bathes the raw skin I've created at my wrists so gently, almost lovingly. It occurs to me for the millionth time that I really am an evil mutt for wanting Katniss dead after all of it.

Ahh... I must have lost myself again in dreaming, because I'm suddenly aware that all is now truly dark and only the not-so quiet hum of some subterranean machinery near our black hiding place can be heard. I have the weird sense that hours or days could have passed, but I have no idea which. The nearest soldier is a cautious distance of at least 4 meters from me and in a cold, dead sleep. All seems still except for the occasional snore that's loud enough to be heard over the mechanical din as everyone sleeps around me. I shudder involuntarily. It's like I'm in the arena again. Ugh. Except _she's_ not snuggled next to me. I'm used to holding her when we sleep in the games. That was our thing. She could be cold, commanding, and cutting to me all day long in said arena, but when sleep came- she was in my arms, soft and clinging to me like a vine. That's how it was. Not now, obviously. The shackles she must have re-clamped around my wrists before she left to settle near Gale sting my raw skin mockingly.

In an effort to stop my destructive train of thought, I tug sharply at my restraints that suspend my arms over my head. I welcome the immediate pain gratefully. It somehow soothes my jealous rage, as I imagine her cuddled against Gale, as she once would have been against me in our arenas of the past. The light rattle of my shackles rubbing against the metal support of the basement steps rouses no one, fortunately. Again, I am glad for the deep, pulsing hum within the muffled room. Who could be awake after the day we've had anyway? We've been going non-stop for at least 24 hours straight, fighting terrors beyond most people's nightmares- pods that wrap you in razor sharp barbed wire or detonate to cut your body in half (Poor Boggs!), not to mention fleeing from the horrifyingly relentless Capitol mutts, so terrifying in their pursuit. Most people would currently be in a welcome state of oblivion that exhaustion brings after the extreme stress of urban combat we faced today ... but not those of us who have been in the games. I prick my ears, straining to hear over the mechanical din. Probably- she's asleep. She should be, yet I sense she may not be. She's like me or even more so in that way. Sleep brings death in an arena. That's why we always slept entwined together, she and I... only safe together. That was my worst mistake.

**_SVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSV_**

Even though alert and almost waiting for it, I startle a little when I hear a faint shuffle to my right, and shift my gaze and position in that direction as best I can in my restraints. I think my tenuous grasp of reality has forsaken me altogether when I see her lithe form moving stealthily towards me in the vague dimness of the shadowy confines of our crypt-like retreat. I smell her first- that heady mix of musk and tangy mint which is unmistakably Katniss. Next, I can feel her warmth next to me, though we aren't touching. My muscles coil in awareness.

Lips feather along my jaw, ghostly in their quest for me ear. This could be one of my more erotic hijack dreams, but I don't care. My blood thrums through my veins at her nearness, not with bitter hatred but with longing desire.

A whisper comes through the dark to me, tickling the skin at my ear, "I can always tell you're awake by your breathing. Why is it I can always hear your breathing?"

"Because you're always listening for it," I murmur huskily, turning my head blindly towards her husky whisper. I sense her soft breath over my lips and lean the small distance to capture her warm lips. Anger and desire war within me in equal measure, as a near silent gasp puffs into my mouth from hers. She tenses as if poised to move back from me, but mysteriously she stops herself.

There is something in this kiss that has never been in any of the countless others we've shared before it. Raw hunger. When I push my tongue past her teeth to deepen the kiss and purposely invade her space to get a rise out of her, I expect her to draw away in offended fury. Instead she makes a soft mewling sound in her throat that I've never heard come from Katniss, as she presses her body against mine. Ohh... Over my head my fists clench in their restraints. I want to touch her so badly, but I can't. I feel helpless and painfully aroused. I press hot, open-mouth kisses along her jaw to her neck.

"Peeta.. I've... missed you so much," she mouths in my ear.

"I've missed me, too," I quip breathlessly before I realize now is not the time for jokes about my mental instability, so I lean toward her, press all of myself against her as I try to find her eyes with mine in the dim light, "I'm here now, Katniss."

A long agonizing pause follows as we stare at each other across the small distance between us in the almost-blackness. I realize I'm taut like one of her bowstrings. Waiting. Watching. Wanting. Always wanting her. Even when I barely know my own name in my hatred of her. I can't seem to summon that hatred now, though.

"Peeta.. I... " my name is torn from her like a soft oath, and her fingers are brushing over my t-shirt covered chest, down my taut abdomen, which contracts at the contact of her fingertips before they stop at the fastening of my trousers. I try to shift towards her hand, which is hovering over my already pulsing arousal. I tilt my head back on my neck slightly, exhaling a breath I didn't even realize I was holding, while those nimble fingers tug my fly downward determinedly. I try to move to help her.

"Yes, my love," I gasp out softly before I can control my response. She tugs my trousers down a little, freeing the evidence of my desire. I so want to hate her at this moment for exposing me thus, but I can't. Even being tortured and brainwashed by those sick bastards in this very Capitol can't stop me wanting her, loving her. Damn. What a sad, pathetic mutt I am.

My self-loathing quickly evaporates when her hands move to cradle me intimately. She whispers, "So many times we slept together- I could feel this pressing into me. It's... so much smoother than I thought it'd be... s-strange... like a thick deer antler, but warm and velvety."

I huff out a soft laugh, incapable of speech as her fingers tighten and loosen over my most sensitive flesh. I'm struggling not to groan aloud. Swallowing convulsively, I finally grit out, "Katniss.. if you keep doing that I'm going to lose control and wake everyone up."

Her hands freeze on me, and I feel her body tense away from me. No! She's misunderstood. I'm not going into a homicidal rage; I'm coming undone with pent-up desire unleashed beneath her strong, supple fingers. I strain against my shackles, pressing my cheek to hers so my lips are at her ear, her hair tickling them, "I.. I mean, what you're doing is making me... Katniss, it feels _incredible_."

"Better than kissing on the beach in the clock arena?" she asks in a curious whisper.

I feel like she's testing me to see if I remember that night. Looking for the old Peeta. More blood surges to my already painful arousal at my startlingly clear memory of that night. _(Thank God the Capitol left me that one!)_ I actually feel dizzy as I remember holding her on the sand, our bodies tangling together in the moonlight, kissing each other like we would never have to stop.

"That was great, too, but this is 100 times more intense for me," I'm glad the darkness covers the embarrassed flush I feel spreading up my neck and across my face. I'm surprised I have any blood left for blushing, as it all seems to have coursed to my nether-regions.

She pauses, digesting what I just said, before whispering in her terse way, "I'm glad." Then she tightens her grip, moving those deliciously agile fingers over my distended flesh. Oh, fuck. I know my eyes roll back in my head in ecstasy.

"_I'm glad." _ That's all she says. I'm sweating and gasping now. Praying no one is awake to hear my heavy breathing. I know _she_ hears it, but I don't care. That heightens my arousal to almost an unbearable extent in some way.

Leaning over I whisper into her ear harshly, "Oh, how I wish I could make love to you properly. Just once."

Abruptly, she slides her leg over my hip to straddle my lap. "Why shouldn't you? We'll probably all be... _gone_ tomorrow anyway."

"Katniss... like this? Are you sure? What about...?" I must be in one of my brainwashed delusions. This can't be happening. If it is a delusion, I really don't want it to end.

She shifts on my lap, grinding into me, and whispers, "It should be you, Peeta, and I don't think we'll have another chance. Besides, I want to. I need you, Peeta. I think I always have."

I know what I should do, the right thing to do, but I am weak. Looking around feverishly, I note that everyone else is a good distance away and still asleep (or thankfully drugged in Gale's case). Mounds of the weird shopkeeper's stock of furs and pelts are stacked to block us at least partially from view. In all likelihood I'll be dead tomorrow, and haven't I wanted this for as long as I've understood what sex was about? There were nights I held her in my arms while I trembled with wanting, tormented by imaginings of Katniss beneath me making soft sounds of pleasure as I drove into her.

I grit my teeth and move to speak close to her ear, "Help me. I want this to be good for you, too."

"I can't imagine it being otherwise, if it's with you, Peeta," I hear the grin in her voice, "You're not the only one who's wanted this, you know."

Planting her knees on the floor between my splayed legs, she raises herself to pull her pants down her hips and beyond. I seize the opportunity to lean into her breasts, which are directly before my face. I place warm, damp kisses there through the thin fabric of her shirt. I feel her breathing quicken as I press my open mouth to her chest.

She reaches slowly over our heads, trailing both her hands up my mostly bare arms, to clasp her hands over my manacled ones, "I should unlock you," she muses.

"No," I respond immediately, "If there's even a small chance I'll... hurt you, I don't want to risk it. Intense emotions sometimes trigger the flashbacks."

She nods regretfully before she lowers her body down on mine, straddling my hips once again to settle her now bare, hot core against my straining member. I can feel the slick fluids of her arousal against the sensitive skin of my pulsing cock. It's just as well I can't touch her as I'd like, because this would be over in less than a minute for me, if I could. Even restrained, I don't think I'll last very long.

She pauses with me at her soft, moist entrance for a few moments. _This is crazy. More crazy than everything else, that is._ Craning my neck so my mouth is at her collarbone, I gently suck there for a moment before whispering up at her as she hovers above me, "Katniss... are you sure this is what you want? We can stop."

In answer to my question, she leans back a little and tugs up the light shirt she had been sleeping in to bare her breasts to me. The pale globes glow temptingly in what little light there is. I duck my head to suckle and kiss them reverently. Her hips begin to undulate against my pelvis, her wet folds brushing up and down the length of me. I have to bite my inner-cheek hard to keep from crying out. We must be very quiet.

She leans down to capture my mouth in a scorching kiss, her tongue pushing between my lips, just as she lifts herself up and then back downward with aching slowness to impale herself on my shaft. I feel her tightness stretching to take me. Simultaneously, we gasp brokenly into each others mouths. She stills with her warm heat surrounding me for several long agonizing seconds, as if waiting for her body to adjust to my invasion. I wonder if she feels any pain and forcefully push away the maddening thought that she might have done this before with … _him_. I fight back against the stinging pain and fury that slice through me at that thought, ordering myself to hold it together. Whatever came before, whatever comes after, I want this, I want her- always.

"Alright?" I ask in a strangled whisper against her lips. At this point if she wants to stop, I just might expire right here and now before the Capitol ever gets its hands on me.

Bracing her hands on my shoulders, she nods slowly, almost absently, before shifting her weight to take me even deeper into her silken depths. The feeling is indescribable. It's almost like the over-whelming effects of the trackerjacker stings in the arena but obviously so much more pleasant. I close my eyes, and I see brilliant oranges and reds exploding behind my eyelids as she begins to move over me, slowly without much rhythm at first. My body is straining under my need to touch her.

Finally forcing my eyes open, I look up at her silhouette shifting slowly in the darkness above me. I am filled with so many emotions: desire, love, regret. This could have been our life. Making love every night with no fear of what could happen next. I'm jostled out of my musings by a soft drop of warm moisture hitting my cheek and trailing down my face to the corner of my lips. It has a salty taste. I must be crying. How mortifying, but then- she's seen me cry before. Then I hear a little sniffle and realize that it was her tears I felt first.

I seriously regret not letting her unshackle me earlier. All I want is to wrap myself around her and hold her while she cries. I press my chest to hers and murmur soft, nonsensical noises against her lips and try to pour all my feelings for her into our melting kisses while I thrust my hips up into hers. In the arenas, we were always pretty good at communicating without words, and this time is no different. My desperate movements seem to have their intended effect. She slows her pace and gently takes my face between her hands, kissing me deeply. I feel as though my soul is escaping through my lips to take up residence in her, and I'm okay with that.

I know I can't hold on much longer with her warm, heated friction surrounding me. I can feel the final pressure building just as her walls engulf my shaft in delicious tremors. I can feel every muscle in her moist depths contracting around me as she throws her head back in a silent scream. _Yes!_ _At last! _I am thrust into blissful oblivion, my seed spilling into her, combining with her own juices in the slippery, erotic cocktail of our loving.

"Peeta, if we die tomorrow I just needed you to know... that I wanted you. Finally, I can't deny it. This wasn't for the sponsors or Haymitch or the Capitol. It was for me and... and for you. Oh, you know I'm no good at this sort of thing," she starts to move away.

"No! Don't go. Not yet. Please... I... I wanted you, too. I never stopped," every part of me is straining to get to her, to hold her close, though she's still within inches of me, her body still clasped around me loosely, as if forgotten.

"I don't believe you- not after what happened when you woke up in 13 and since then," she mutters in a flat voice. I wish I could see her face more clearly. It's usually hard to read her expressions, but I've had lots of practice. The murkiness prevents me, though. I sigh helplessly.

"Don't you see? That was the real torture, Katniss. My hands around your throat, choking the life out of you, but all the while still loving you. I hated that I did that. I will live with the regret of that until the day I die, which I hope is soon," I finish bitterly.

"Don't say that!" she rasps out and moves to wrap her arms around me and tuck her face into my neck just like she used to in the arena. "You were... _are_ the good one, the noble one. If anyone should have been the Mockingjay, it's you, Peeta."

"Ah, but I never had your conviction, sweetheart," I evoke Haymitch's trademark endearment, as I kiss Katniss' hair reverently and grin like an idiot into the darkness.

**_SVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSVSV_**

The hum of the nearby machines is what I hear next. I am alone as I jolt upright, gasping breathlessly, my shackles clink softly against the metal stair support I'm chained to. I have no idea what time it is. I sense other rebel soldiers still sleeping some distance from me in the dark basement room. My mind spins and whirls wildly as images of … Katniss coming to me in the night and making sweet love to my broken, beaten, chained body flash through all the other noise in my head. Real or not real?

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_So... anyone know the answer to Peeta's last question? Would you like to know? I have some ideas for where this could go from here. Anyone? Reviews? Is anyone out there?_


	2. Until My Darkness Goes

_Big, __big __thanks __to __all __of __you __out __there __who __read, __followed, __and/or __favorited __my __little __story, __especially __Court81891 __for __the __words __of__ welcome and __encouragement! __So, __we __continue __with __a __bit __of __risque __language __and __innuendo, __and, __of __course, __some__ post-hijacked Peeta __angst. __You __are __warned.** S**__**o **__hope __you __like__ Part 2__! __I __own __nothing._

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**Part ****2-**** Until My Darkness Goes**

Confused. I can't decide which is better: rage or confusion. Yeah. Rage is definitely better. At least it's an empowering emotion. Confusion just makes me feel like a clueless fucking victim. I'm essentially alone in this humming hole where we've taken sanctuary in the Capitol. The other soldiers in my squad are still sleeping a good distance away from me. I can't even see Katniss really. I feel physical longing for the illusion of power my fury gives me. When I hate Katniss, the cravings for her aren't so bad. My cravings to have Katniss near- Moving over me, her warm heat around me, fusing our bodies together. Real? Not Real? These questions play over and over in my mind along with other memories or delusions,_ which_ I don't know. She told me it was always me she wanted and showed me by giving herself to me. I can almost make myself believe I taste her on my lips and smell her on my skin. I will slowly go insane with this wondering. Katniss fucked me in the night. Real? Not real?

The other soldiers in my squad, the one's still alive, anyway, are soon up and stirring, so it must be morning. Or is it afternoon? Impossible to tell in this windowless pit, and who gives a flying fuck anyway? All I know is I'm still strung up in my shackles at the stairway, like a ham in a butcher's window. Kind of appropriate that I equate myself with a slab of meat, as that must be how Katniss sees me- A piece of meat that she can creep over to and have her way with while everyone else is asleep. Or maybe I'm so delusional, that I imagined her visit to my side of the room a few hours ago. _Please God, let the amazing sex with Katniss have been __**real**__._

I am _such_ a pathetic fuck. Real. Still, I can't seem to keep my eyes from following her as she moves around the dim, claustrophobic space. Watching. Waiting. Wanting._ Again._ Now, I try valiantly to tamp down the fury I longed for as it finally rises up in me with my resentment. She seems to have no idea of the power she possesses over me, over just about everyone_. _ Being trapped between loving her and hating her really sucks. My mind whirls dizzyingly as everything around me distorts and fades to a jumble of thoughts and images.

_Stop your fucking whining, you fucking mutt. Should have done what you were meant to do, and killed the mutt-bitch when you had your chance._

_**Not real! Shut the fuck up, you hijacked sonuvabitch. **_

_In the arena again, the first one, with all the trees and birds and scary mutations. I'm lying in the mud down by the river. I will die today. Cato's sword made sure of that. I'm sure of it. At least the sound of running water nearby is soothing. If I have to die, at least I can listen to the water and let it carry me away. Katniss may win yet, and that will make it all worth it. I hope on some level I'll know when her life continues because of me in some small way._

_**Real. But get out of your head. You're in a Capitol basement, you miserable fuck.**_

Snap out of it. Leave the past in the past. New arena. New tributes, if you can call them that...I tug at my restrained hands over my head hoping the intense pain will drive out the last of my spinning thoughts. I'm in the dim cellar once more with Cressida, Pollux, Gale and …

Katniss is still here. _I'm_ still here, parts of me anyway. I'm so preoccupied with my fractured memories and thoughts, that I don't hear the first part of what Katniss is saying to our small group of survivors. What was that? Katniss is confessing to leading us all here under the pretense that it was a mission for President Coin. Katniss is talking about surrendering herself to President Snow. She wants to give herself to that monster as some sort of fucked up sacrificial offering in hopes that someone else can get close enough to kill him in the process. And I thought _**I **_was crazy. I feel sizzling fury again. After all I've done, all I've _lost _ to protect her, she's just going to throw it all away by giving herself up to Snow on the off chance that one of us might be able to kill him before he kills her. That's rich.

Really glad my hands are shackled right now, and keeping me from strangling her in my frustration. In the space of an hour I'd swung from murderous to a flashback of my first time in the arena, and then back to wanting to kill Katniss again, but for different reasons. So, so tired of this shit, and so damn tired of that stubborn, noble, self-sacrificing woman. Damn her!

Can't even get away from her, as I sit here, chained to the fucking stairs while she discusses her plans with her loyal followers, which apparently somehow includes me. She really has no idea of the power she wields. These people would follow her to the gates of hell, probably are going to do so in the near future, actually... along with me. Fuck. How did I get here again?

Oh, yeah. Some small, _infinitesimal_ part of me still clings to the old Peeta, the one who still loves Katniss with everything in him. Even a small part of 'everything' is still quite a lot, in fact. Katniss goes on talking so blithely about luring Snow into executing her in public, and how that would give Gale the chance to shoot him.

"What do you think, Peeta?" Katniss' eyes are now on me, studying me intently.

"No!" I shake my head to rid myself of the terrifying image of Katniss' execution. Too risky, even if I bought into her doing such an insane thing. I knew better than anyone that Snow liked to play with his food before he devoured it, like the evil monster he is. There was a good chance, he would do that in private, and then Katniss would have given her life for nothing. I try to explain this, but don't feel that I do a very good job of it. Katniss looks unconvinced.

"Do we even know if Snow comes out in public anymore? Too many variables. Too risky for the uncertain advantage it might give us," sensible, rational Peeta _(Must remember, that's me now.)_ asks, desperately trying to stop her slide into self-destruction.

I can tell Gale agrees with me. Count on the two poor sods who love her agreeing on this one point.

Gale hedges and reasons that we should try to think of another way. Wily as he is, he knows if he came out against her, too, it would greatly increase the odds of her sneaking out on her own and doing something stupid. I look him in the eye for the first time since we entered this subterranean hell, and I feel some sort of understanding pass between us. We're still protecting Katniss, as we always have, even from herself. I feel a rush of guilt when my mind flashes to the memory of Katniss taking me into her body while Gale slept in a drug induced haze across the room. Real or not real? Damn it. I have to know.

That evening, after Tigris closes, we skulk up to her shop on the floor above to eat and watch the broadcasts coming from the Capitol. I relish being out of the the basement crypt and regaining the use of my hands, getting the feeling back into them for a bit. Tiring of watching the Capitol's twisted truths and lies about us, I rack my brain trying to think of a way to determine whether or not the earth-shattering sex I had with Katniss earlier was some delusional fancy on my part or not. I can't bring myself to ask her, and there really isn't a chance for that, as we're all together, and I'm certainly not going to do that in front of Gale and the rest of our company.

I find myself restlessly prowling around the tiger lady's now-closed shop, not really paying attention to the racks and bins of bizarre fur undergarments and clothing made from the pelts of animals I can't even imagine. Tigris pads slinkily over to stand next to me without me even realizing it until she speaks in her raspy kitten voice. Maybe she really is part cat, or I'm that distracted.

"Interested in a pair of sable chaps, dear boy?" she purrs silkily, gesturing to the rack of backless pants in front of us, as she eyes me up and down with the frank appraisal of a long-time stylist, "I have a black pair that would just set off your ass...sets perfectly. I'll throw in a fine barbed leather whip for fun." She's actually checking out my ass and talking about whips. I feel my cheeks heating in a fiery blush.

"Err...maybe some other time, but … um... th-thank.. you?" I stammer, finishing lamely. What is the proper etiquette for refusing ass-less pants and a complementary whip, I wonder.

"Girlie there," she nods her head in Katniss' direction, who's currently in deep conversation with Gale, "Wouldn't know what hit her. She may be close with that tall one there, but I can tell she's of two minds on the mater."

"Err...how do you mean?" I can't help myself asking.

Tigris' creepy feline eyes regard me smugly, "By the looks she keeps shooting you when tall, dark and dull isn't looking, and you're too dim to notice. Yessss...I think chaps and a whip, definitely. A girl like that would enjoy a little rough play with her lover..."

Tigris trails off suggestively, leaving me to imagine Katniss lightly whipping my bare-ass, and, help me, but I feel the beginnings of an erection at the idea. My cheeks must be scarlet at this point.

"Think about, lover boy. I just gave her a pair of fur leggings, which I know you'd enjoy pealing off of herrr..." she purrs throatily, her feline features contorting into a knowing smirk before trotting off, leaving me staring at the rack of backless furry britches as if they were a pit of snakes.

Resolutely, I turn my back on the rack of risque apparel, and tamp down images of pushing furry pants down Katniss' thighs and thrusting myself between them into her over and over again. My gaze falls on the subject of my lusty imaginings. She's still talking to Gale, but as he turns to carry a dish into the kitchen, Katniss looks right at me, or I should I say _into_ me. Her stormy gray eyes study me intently, and I feel like she can see every depraved thought revolving around in my twisted, fucked up mind. I narrow my eyes slightly at the memory of us together earlier, in the dark basement, her warm heat still clasped around my erection at the end of our love-making, when she whispered so passionately, '...If we die tomorrow, I just needed you to know...that I wanted you...'

Now, as we stare at each other across the length of Tigris' kink palace, Katniss inhales a shuddering breath before taking a step towards me, her eyes never leaving mine, but then Gale calls to her from the kitchen and the moment is lost when she turns to join him. God, I hate him. I hate her. She wanted me. Real or not real?

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Hours later, chained to the stair support that has become my good friend in what I've come to think of as my own personal fur-encrusted dungeon, I long for the answer. Certainly, can't find one in the oppressive darkness around me, and I'm too wired to sleep. Katniss is settled near Gale not too far from me. I think she is sleeping now, but I can't help hoping and waiting for her to wake and come to me as she did earlier. In the weighted gloom, I feel the hopeless, near-crushing weight in my chest at the thought that it may very well have been a hijacked delusion and not reality.

Ironically, not much later, Gale stirs and somehow sees me awake in the dimness. He watches me for a few moments, before getting up and moving quietly to the nearby sink to get a drink of water. He holds up an old metal can we've been using as a water cup towards me in silent question. I nod. I am thirsty.

I thank him for the water, and he brushes it off and admits to waking often. I think about that for a moment, and then I realize that he must be thinking about Katniss, too. Wondering if she's going to sneak off and give herself up to Snow. I say as much to him.

There is a long, awkward pause between us. I hope he'll go to sleep again, leaving me to my solitary musings. His eyes stay open, scanning the near darkness, like the watchful hunter he is.

"That was funny what Tigris said earlier about no one knowing what to do with Katniss..." I muse finally, recalling the provocative conversation I'd had with Tigris just before she teased Katniss.

"Well, _we_ never have," Gale replies with irony.

We both laugh, though I don't think either one of us finds what he said all that funny. My laughter is cut off abruptly when I think of Gale with Katniss now. They seem together, and I've known since he was whipped back in 12 that she loves him. I grudgingly tell him that I know this.

He shakes his head dismissively, telling me not to believe it before swallowing painfully and saying, "The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell... well, she never kissed me like that."

I shift uncomfortably, and my restraints clink against the stair support softly. That was all for the millions of rabid fans, I think. That was for Katniss' survival. It was in fact, not real.

When I say this aloud, Gale's lips twist sardonically, "No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her..."

Well, this makes me sound like the pathetic love-sick loser that I am, I guess. I try to feel angry at him for saying that I will win her by being the bigger fool for her, but somehow, it's just not in me at the moment. A part of me wonders if there's truth in that.

After further conversation has each of us wondering who she'd choose between the two of us, I ponder cautiously aloud, "I wonder how she'll make up her mind."

"Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without." Gale's answer is chilling in its blunt simplicity and seems to echo endlessly round and round in my head long after he's back asleep.

Doomed. I am doomed. If I don't die when I leave the relative safety of Tigris' shop, I am doomed hereafter to a half life of loving a woman who chose the man she needed _more_, and that man wasn't going to be me. Never was me.

Relentless hours of tedium broken only by my brutal nightmares blend together in the netherworld of the cellar refuge. Just when I start to think that I'll remain here forever, in this limbo between barely subsistent living and the almost certain death that awaits me once outside in the streets, they make an announcement on the Capitol television that shop keepers should do their share and take in refugees now flooding into the city center from other parts of the decimated city. Our time here will come to an end very soon. We must leave before we are trapped here waiting in fear of a curious refugee discovering us.

Our situation is precarious, and it becomes still worse, when we watch a report about a poor man who is beaten to death by an angry mob because he resembled me. I tremble with self-loathing. All the man ever did wrong was have the similar hair color and features of Peeta Mellark. Now he is dead. Another death, another victim to lay at my door. I've lost count of how many there have been since Foxface. I think I don't want to remember.

I am pulled from my bitter hatred of myself, when Katniss says to the group at large, "I'm leaving in the morning. It's too dangerous for us to stay together any longer. We'll have to split up. Peeta," she looks at me for the first time in many hours, "You set foot outside, and you'll be recognized immediately. You should stay here with Tigris until it's safer."

She's suggesting I bide my time here with Tigris, hiding like a lowly rat, cowering in the darkness while everyone else goes to fight? No fucking way.

"I'll be alright out there on my own," I try to keep my voice steady, "Maybe if I borrow a wig or something. If nothing else, I'll be a good diversion while the rest of you get to Snow."

A discussion follows that ends with Gale generously offering me his rebel-issue nightlock pill, so I can off myself if I get captured by Snow. I know he means it as a good-faith act of friendship, but I can't help the boiling hatred in my gut at the implication that I'll be alone, and he'll be with Katniss. He was always going to get her anyway. Nice of him to at least give me the option of an easy out, I suppose, but part of me doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of him knowing that he helped me finally succeed in sacrificing myself.

It's Katniss who decides me. Her hand closes around mine, where I am still holding Gale's little death offering in my palm.

"Take it, Peeta," she says tightly, "No one will be there to help you."

It's then that I finally realize what my fractured mind has been avoiding for days, weeks even. Katniss is irrevocably lost to me. There's nothing left for me. Not my sanity. Not Katniss. It takes everything I have to tuck the nightlock tablet into my uniform pocket and not just down it right then and there. That would be the coward's way out. Time for that later, after I've helped Katniss one last time. Just as in the first arena and the second and so many times after that, I **_cannot die_** until I've done everything in my power to help Katniss, to hope that she will somehow survive, and make my death worthwhile. I push the thoughts of future gray-eyed children scampering around a smiling Katniss and a proud Gale back in 12, from my mind. If she is happy, that is all I could hope for. That is my dying wish, for I am as certain of my imminent death as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow- I will leave this cruel, broken world, never to return, and good riddance.

After a restless night full of nightmares of watching Katniss eating nightlock berries or being chased by rose-scented mutts, I wake to a dawn that has me doubting my earlier certainty. The sky seems to belie the notion that the sun did indeed rise today. All is gray dimness and swirling snow as throngs of bundled and confused refugees trudge past the shop windows.

Tigris has worked her magic as a former Capitol stylist extraordinaire, transforming us from a rag tag group of uniformed rebels to fleeing citizens of the Capitol. I doff my fur cap to her as a show of admiration, and she blushes sweetly. She may look fierce, but she has been a true, kind friend to us, sheltering and feeding us all these days. People like her renew my faith that there can be a better life after we defeat Snow. We prepare to leave her at last, and I am sorry for it.

Cressida and Pollux are the first to walk into the snowy street, moving in the direction of Snow's mansion, leaving Gale, Katniss and I standing quietly inside the red doorway of Tigress' shop. Katniss turns to me and unlocks my shackles. I feel a momentary rush of panic as I realize I'm unrestrained, about to go out alone and face death or worse. I bite down on my terror and rub my sore wrists. I am afraid. I am also _so_ weary, but what is that ancient poem they taught us in school? "...But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep..." * I am greatly comforted by the thought that the welcome sleep of forever awaits me "...lovely, dark, and deep..." * at the end of my journey. I almost ache for it.

I have to bite back a laugh as Katniss cautions me so earnestly not to do anything foolish. I am to follow behind her and Gale, and create the distraction of simply being me if things go to shit, which they likely will. Seems pretty _foolish_ to me, but I'm okay with that. I can't seem to feel the emotion of anger anymore.

Then her arms are wrapped tightly about my neck, her slender body pressed to mine. I haven't been this close to her since she may or may not have come to me in the darkness and made sweet, mind-altering love to me a few days ago. Seems like a lifetime ago now. My arms enclose her by sheer habit, as I try to catalog everything about this that I love in the little time I have left. If I can create my own afterlife, and I've been good enough to deserve a happy one, all I could ever ask for is this- Katniss in my arms with her own around me. Her smell envelops me: mint and Katniss. I hear her breath rasping out a little too quickly near my ear. I feel her grip tighten for a few moments before she finally draws back from me. I see tears glistening in her eyes, as she looks at me with what really feels like love. Maybe she does love me in some way, now, here at the end, when we will at last be separated forever. Finally. After everything. This is _real_.

* * *

_Sorry for regurgitating a bit of MJ. I felt the story would not flow well without it. I hope the addition of Peeta's perspectives of familiar events added some interest. Did you struggle to keep up with his mood swings and disjointed stream of consciousness thought processes? Be assured AU kicks in with a vengeance in the following chapters. That is, if you'll kindly __**review**__, and let me know if you'd like more chapters._

_* The excerpts from an "ancient poem" Peeta refers to are from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."_


	3. Never to Come Back

_____****____**Apologies for taking so long to update this fiction. I needed to take a deep breath and steel my resolve for this chapter. Hope it was worth the wait.**_

_____**Special thanks **______**to ct522 for her undying support and advice on this project, and **_to Wakebytheriver for her invaluable help in clearing up the murky bits. I am so fortunate to have you both! 

_____****__**Part 2 Summary-** __After a real or imagined passionate tryst between Katniss & Peeta in Tigris' basement in the Capitol, our protagonists prepare to carry out an assassination attempt against President Snow. They must make their way through treacherous Capitol streets to the president's mansion._

___**Warning: Graphic images of violence ahead.**_

* * *

**Part 3- Never to Come Back**

Lost. I am lost in the swirling grayness of a Capitol street a few blocks from President Snow's mansion. Looming buildings, frightened citizens, and snow are all around me. Everyone I've ever known or loved is lost to me. Lost forever. I feel blackness replacing the gray and fight it with everything left in me. I have to keep going for her. Always for her. Katniss. I can't see her. She and Gale left the relative safety of the red doorway of Tigris' shop just seconds before me. Swallowed up in the icy chaos of the panicked city- _she is gone_. Never again will I look in her storm-cloud gray eyes or hear her melodious voice.

As I begin trudging in the direction I think Gale and Katniss took, I still find myself wanting to cling to the hate I have for Katniss that the Capitol supposedly planted in my mind. If I hate her, maybe the pain of knowing I'll never see her again will abate.

_I'm so full of shit._

I hate her. I love her. I hate her. I love her. Like opposing sides of the coins we used to eek out our livelihood at the bakery back in District 12. The bakery that is now a pile of ash. Pain lances through me, causing my vision to blur. No. Not now. Not here.

_District 12, three years prior:_

_I'm standing in the kitchen at the back of the bakery waiting for the cheese buns I've spent the morning preparing to finish their final minutes in the oven. Cheese buns are tricky that way. It takes skill and good timing to ensure they're done just right. Take them out too soon, and the cheese isn't melted into the dough properly. Too late and you've got a singed, cheese-encrusted mess. _

_I hear Dad's deep voice muffled by the swinging door that separates the front of the bakery from the kitchen. He's helping Mrs. Nettlesen with an order of pastries for her daughter's baby shower later that morning. I stare absently into the orange glow of the ovens before a__ sharp rap on the back door startles me from my vigil. Walking over to open the door, my__ heart stutters in my chest when I find Katniss Everdeen on the threshold, her sullen, gray eyes regarding me with an air of what I think is wariness._

_"Oh...um... D-dad's helping someone out front. I'm sure he'll be done in a minute, if you'd care to wait," I curse my awkwardness, as Katniss steps silently into the kitchen, bringing the refreshing coolness of the forest with her. I can smell pine and rich earth while I feel the chill that still clings to her even in the arid air around us._

_After a few uncomfortable moments, I clear my throat, "Excuse me. I have to take something out of the oven."_

_I'm removing the golden cheese buns from the oven, when I happen to glance up at Katniss in time to see her gaze fixed on the tray in my hands. I don't think I've ever seen such a look of longing in my life. What a wonderful thing it would be if she looked at me with a fraction of that hunger. I swat the errant thought away, as I would a bee buzzing at my ear._

_"You've come to trade," I mumble inanely. (Of course she has. She comes to trade every Saturday, you idiot.)_

_"Yes," she responds in her soft, rich voice, "I have four squirrels I just got today."_

_"Dad will be happy to hear that," I try for a friendly smile, which apparently fails because she doesn't return it, but I persevere, "Well, as you can see, we have these fresh out of the oven. Would a couple dozen cheese buns be enough?"_

_Her eyes widen at my offer, "Uh, your dad usually just gives me a small loaf of your brown bread, ...but that's for... uh... two squirrels."_

_"Well... you have twice that today. Dad wouldn't want to short you, I'm sure," I reply, reaching for a loaf of coarse brown bread from a cooling rack by the oven and placing it in a paper bag. I then turn back to the tray of cheese buns on the counter, intending to select the biggest ones to bag them as well._

_"I won't take more than 6 of those and the bread for the trade," she says firmly._

_"I'll give you the bread and a dozen cheese buns. I made a few extra today, so..." I fib, hopefully convincingly._

_"Six and the bread or no deal," she interrupts with a stubborn tilt of her chin._

_I count out the six largest of the batch and place them in another paper sack, as she turns to open her game bag to remove her part of the trade. While her attention is elsewhere, I slip 4 more rolls into the sack, and close it quickly just as she turns back to me, eyeing me with suspicion. The image of her chucking the extra rolls at my head the next time I pass her in the hall at school flashes through my mind, and I struggle not to wince._

_Trying to keep my expression neutral, I stride over to give her the two bags as she hands me her game. Her cool, slim fingers brush mine accidentally when she tries to take both bags in one hand and just manages it._

_"Well... thanks," she mumbles while averting her eyes, "Tell your father I'll see him next week."_

_"Okay," I reply, "I'll, uh, see you at school, I guess."_

_I cringe at my trite words. It's not like we're friends at school or anything. Not what I wanted to say at all._

_"Yeah, see you," she responds with a small smile._

_She's closed the battered back door behind her before I can think of anything else to delay her. I huff out a heavy sigh, leaning on the nearby counter with my hands in front of me, fingers still tingling from our accidental touch. I have loved this girl since we were children, and she has no idea._

Present Day, Capitol:

Back in the icy grayness of the Capitol street, I stagger a step or two before I'm steady on my feet. At least this flashback was a relatively pleasant one, and I didn't come back screaming and crying like I usually do. In my disoriented state, I've jostled two older ladies just ahead of me, who are dressed in layers of colorful furs that look like they came from Tigris' shop. I'm muttering an apology, careful to keep my head down and my face mostly buried in the fur scarf Tigris gave me when I hear the shots overhead.

No! The brightly colored ladies are falling to the ground like rag dolls. They're shooting innocent people in the street now!

The images of blood splattering the dirty snow in the street and the sounds of people screaming are added to the other horrific pictures that already revolve round and round in my fractured mind. By reflex, I lurch off the street to the side of a building at the edge of a sidewalk to take cover, as it seems the shots are being fired from the rooftops overhead. It's hard to see much of anything. One of the women I'd accidentally bumped into is on the edge of the street slowly crawling toward me.

Leaning out from the relative shelter of the building, I reach out my hands to help her. Her hands in mine are cold and her eyes seem hazy, but I have to try. Just as I manage to help her half-crawl to lie next to me on the sidewalk in the shadow of the building, she expels a gasping breath, and her eyes close forever. I feel for a pulse on her veiny wrist, but I know it's futile. She is dead- this Capitol woman that I'd never met until I ran into her a few moments ago. I don't even feel loss and grief as I once would have. It's muted.

I lean over the woman, and arrange her close to the smooth brick wall of the building, so she is on her back in a peaceful pose, like sleep. I irrationally wish for some flowers like those Katniss placed around Rue so long ago. Snowflakes settle on her pale, withered cheeks, signs of advanced age that are a rarity in the Capitol. She must have been old to have such deep wrinkles in this place so fond of cosmetic surgery. I silently hope she had a good life whatever its length.

Squinting into the snow falling in my face, I turn my eyes upward to the rooftops around me in an effort to see our attackers. I see nothing but large flakes of icy crystal and a bit of sullen sky overhead. While I was settling the woman, the gunmen must have moved on, but I decide not to take any chances. After one final look back at the fallen lady, I begin to edge along the wall of the building, my hands brushing over the cold stone wall. It occurs to me that Gale and Katniss were ahead of me and could now be in the street among the dead. I desperately scan the bodies lying in the trampled snow of the street as I pass, but I don't see them. My body is humming with relief and tension simultaneously. Not here. They're not here.

Another block and there are explosions and more death. This is like one of my hijackings, but it's happening, and it's real. The world is now a spinning kaleidoscope of death. I pause to lean dizzily against a garish pink brick wall for support before something, I'm not even sure what, propels me forward.

I make it another block, when the seemingly harmless street in front of me abruptly opens up into a gaping hole that encompasses the entire width between the two buildings on either side. If I'd been a few steps ahead, I'd be among the dozen or so people falling to their deaths, or whatever is more than 50 feet below. I try to ignore the ominous growls followed by a few weak screams rising out of the rancid, black pit. The Capitol's mutts are lurking below, and they are hungry by the sound of it. I stand with my toes planted just on the edge of the midnight void, feeling the overwhelming urge to leap, to join them, my kindred. I am, after all, one of the Capitol's mutts. I wonder idly if they'd welcome me as one of their own, or if they'd tear me to shreds like any other hapless victim falling into their lair.

I am jolted from my macabre reverie by a burst of gunshots. Are they now shooting the unfortunate souls still clinging to the sides of the buildings that did not initially fall into the pit? I look for the source of the shots, and when I find it, my stomach plummets to my feet.

Katniss is directly across the empty expanse that used to be the street, her weapon drawn. Looking in the direction of her gaze, I see Gale hoisting himself into the doorway of a building at the pit's edge diagonal and to the right from me. White uniformed Peacekeepers are grabbing at him and pulling him in. My eyes fly back across the street to Katniss and catch a brief look of agony flash on her face before she turns to run in the opposite direction. I feel a sick sense of consolation that she has left him behind as well. As I watch her retreating figure, I realize that she has shed all the paltry mortal bonds of friendship or love that bound her. She is at last free to achieve her objective, to continue her quest to kill Snow. I wonder at the power of her single-minded desire to obtain her goal. Is that why we all lay in her wake like debris in the path of a deadly storm?

I shake myself into action when I realize I'm too exposed here in the street. I look up to my left and catch sight of a balcony on a building about a story above street level running the length of the block above the pit. If I could just get up to it, I could cross over the foul hole and continue toward the president's mansion. _Towards Katniss_, a voice in my head whispers snidely. Why I feel compelled to still follow that faithless bitch like some pathetic mongrel is beyond my comprehension, but I see a slender trellis covered by some winter-dead vines that is a virtual ladder to the balcony above. I test it with my booted feet, and it seems sound, so I begin to climb.

Just as I tumble over the railing onto the balcony, a man in a puce bathrobe steps out of a doorway leading from the building adjoining the balcony. He's clutching a small decorative knife in his pale, plump fingers. He raises the blade shakily, as if to threaten me. I struggle not to laugh at the pathetic, cowering wretch. He thinks he's a match for one of the Capitol's worst creations? I feel a menacing grin spread across my face. This has the effect of terrifying him further, if that's possible, because he lets out a pitiful squeak and flings the knife at me, where it falls harmlessly at my feet before he scurries back into the apartment he came from, slamming the balcony door so hard that its glass panes rattle in their casements. I lean down to retrieve the knife and toss it over the railing into the yawning, black pit below and continue across the balcony to its other end.

Looking down, I see there is no handy trellis on this side, but no matter, I climb over the railing and lower myself until I am hanging by my hands over the area where the street is still whole just next to the pit's edge. It's a gamble- if my landing is off in the slightest, I'll end up in the hole after all my efforts to avoid it.

After a few deep breaths and a final glance down at the street where I hope to land, I relax my fingers and feel the brief weightlessness of falling. Even with my bad leg, I land with a hard thud on the solid street with inches to spare on the edge of the pit.

I hardly give myself a second to catch my breath before I begin running in the direction I saw Katniss disappear. I pass panicked citizens and Peacekeepers alike. They don't seem to notice me as they run by me in all directions. I suppose, thanks to Tigris, I look like any other frightened citizen fleeing the scene of death and destruction.

Another block and I'm at the City Circle with all its impressive and overdone buildings. The president's mansion is ahead. I can't believe I've made it this far with everyone in this city wanting me dead, and no one is the wiser. I throw back my head and bark out a maniacal laugh. Two old men pause to regard me warily for a moment but then scuttle off into the large crowds gathered in the Circle. _That's right, best get as far away from the raving lunatic mutt as possible._

My laughter dies quickly as I realize I need to make my way past these large crowds to get to the president's mansion. I lower my shoulder in determination and begin to throw my weight into plowing through the shivering masses of refugees. I'm making progress when a Capitol hovercraft appears a ways ahead over the City Circle close to the mansion.

Dozens of tiny parachutes like those they used to send us care-packages in the arenas during the games begin floating down from the craft like large silvery snowflakes. I stop to watch their decent in confusion. Who would be sending aid to the freezing citizens at the city center? I wonder if this is some sort of desperate PR stunt to garner support for the doomed regime of President Snow. _Too little, too late_, I reckon.

The hovercraft disappears and all is eerily silent for this many people gathered- until there is a loud barrage of ear-splitting explosions. People are screaming and running away from the mansion, and I use the confusion to push my way closer. I have to see. My only thought is that Katniss could have been caught up in it.

All the horrifying experiences of my hijackings and armed combat in the streets of the Capitol have not prepared me for what I find. The parachutes were _not_ meant to help. They were bombs intended to kill. The snow is red with blood splattered pieces of ...of...

Oh, God... of people...small... little...children. They have blown up their own children!

A sob wrenches from somewhere deep in my chest. Other children are hurt badly and wandering aimlessly in confusion. A little boy of about six crosses my path with a dazed look in his eyes, clutching a charred, severed hand in his. I kneel down in front of him. His eyes are blue, and the whites stand out against his sooty, blood-streaked face.

His lips tremble as he stammers at me, "M-mister, have y-you seen Adelaide? I'm not to let go of her hand. M-mama made me p-promise."

I gently grasp the boy's wrist above his hand holding the gruesome remains of what I suspect is Adelaide, wondering what to do next. I must try to get to Katniss, but this child... I look around helplessly. To my left, I see a sudden surge of white uniforms and protectively hunker over the boy as I suspect it's a wave of peacekeepers sent in to finish the slaughter the bombs began. I have a split second to ponder that this is how it will end for me, for the little boy, and most likely for Katniss if she isn't gone already.

No gunshots ring out from the white figures now converging on the area, and I realize they are not Peacekeepers, but medics trying to help the injured and dying in the Circle in front of the mansion. A young woman in a white uniform silently takes the young boy from my charge and leads him to where other victims are being gathered for treatment.

Pausing for a second, I shift from foot to foot in the pink slush under my boots, puzzling. I'm confused. Why would Snow start a slaughter by sending in parachute bombs and then send in medical aid right after? It makes no sense, but then little of what has happened since the first time I was reaped has made much sense to me.

It's then that I notice that there are countless parachutes still intact clutched in the hands of bewildered children or lying innocently on the bloody snow of the Circle. Why didn't they explode as well? Unless...

Horror washes over me. I scan the crowd desperately looking for Katniss, my partner in the games. She has to be here but where? I must find her! This is a trap like in the arena. We're all in a trap. We must get out! **We have to get out now!**

Hysteria surges through me. I'm turning about looking for Katniss in wild desperation, when I see a tell-tale blonde braid trailing down the back of a girl quickly walking by me. Prim? Am I hallucinating again? I haven't seen Prim since they sent me to the Capitol. Prim should be in 13 training to be a medic. A medic... these are rebel medics from 13.

"Prim!" I scream over the cacophony of other voices, other screams. She hears me. She stops next to a short cement wall about 10 feet from me and stares in wide-eyed disbelief.

"Prim!" I shout frantically, feeling like I'm in one of my hijacking spells, but I know I'm not, "It's a trap, Prim. Run, Prim, run!"

Prim opens her mouth to speak, but then suddenly a slender woman in a black coat surges forward out of the crowd and throws herself at Prim, and I just see it. A single, dark braid I'd recognize anywhere, escaping from her fur cap. Katniss! I _must_ be hallucinating now.

I push my way through the short distance between us, glancing around wildly for any escape as I make my way to them. I realize there is none. The crowds are too thick to get far, so I do the only thing I can think of. I tackle the two sisters and throw them with every ounce of strength I have left in me to the ground against the cement barricade next to us. They hit it hard, and I think Prim may be unconscious, but Katniss is not. She begins to struggle violently against me, but I manage to use my advantage of strength and sheer weight to hold her against the barricade next to Prim.

"Peeta? What...Peeta...what are you doing?" she finally stops struggling long enough to gasp out.

"T-trap, Katniss," I gasp back, winded from my dive on top of them and her struggles, "Stay down. Keep Prim safe."

Katniss' beautiful, stormy eyes study me like you would expect someone to look at a crazy person, but if I'm crazy, I'll apologize later. I reach out my hand and clasp her head down against the cement wall, all the while staring at her, willing her to understand me, "Stay down, Katniss. Trap like in the games."

I move to cover them both with my body as much as I can. Not sure what's coming next, but somehow I know it's not good. More bombs, gun-wielding Peacekeepers, clowns on pink elephants, who the fuck knows?

I'm just raising my head to have a look around when the explosions start again. The deafening noise around us means we're right in the midst of them. I feel the percussions radiate through me, through Katniss, through our cement shield, through everything. So, _this_ is how it will finally end? I will die protecting Katniss, protecting her beloved Prim. I'm alright with that. I only hope my body will be enough to keep them safe. There's a blinding flash that even manages to get through my closed eyes. I marvel at the brightness painting the inside of my eyelids with shimmering gold. Then there is searing, agonizing pain, and everything is **painted black**...

* * *

_Phew! Anyone else wrung out from that? __Do you want to know what happens next? _Please review and let me know! 


	4. When Your Whole World Is Black

_Part 3 Summary: We left Peeta throwing himself at Katniss and Prim in a desperate attempt to protect them during the horrific parachute bombings in front of the president's mansion._

**_Warning: Adult content ahead_**

_Many thanks to my long-suffering beta, ct522! I'd be lost without her, I tell you. Lost!_

* * *

**Part 4- Not Easy Facing Up When Your Whole World Is Black**

_Post-Revolution- Somewhere in the Capitol:_

Dead.

I must be dead. Not what I expected. For one thing, I thought my pain would be over after I died. I'm not exactly sure what I had thought being dead would be like. Black nothingness, maybe? Well, I got the blackness, but not the nothingness. Fuck. Death hurts a fucking lot. Even my eyelids throb with a pain indescribable. I thought my torture sessions with the sick bastards in the Capitol during my captivity were bad. That was a District 4 vacation at the damn beach compared to this current shit-storm of torturous misery. And why the hell is everything black?

_4 Months Prior, Capitol Captive in the Reprogramming Center:_

The cloth over my face came first. Not so bad right? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing until they drenched it in water, effectively cutting off the air to my nose and mouth. Gasping through my mouth helped a little, but the drenching didn't stop.

Did I mention I was strapped to a cold, hard, metal table, unable to move my arms or legs or even my head? _Can't breathe! _I choke up the water pouring over my cloth-covered face, but it just goes back down my throat, into my windpipe, into my lungs. I try to scream, but I can't. **I'm drowning!** Horrific noises I've never heard before come from my water congested throat. No one hears, no one cares.

Maybe I died then, and I just didn't realize it?

_Post-Revolution- New Panem Capitol Hospital- Critical Care Ward_

It's pitch black dark when I come back to myself again. At least I think I'm back in my body. It wouldn't hurt so damn much if I were unconscious, and I've decided I'm not dead, though I sure wish I was. Am I back in the Capitol's torture chamber?

"He's coming round," a voice says in a garbled echo, "...restraints will h-hold him. ...Can't risk t-tearing .. new skin."

It's then that I realize I can't move. I'm on my belly, and it's as if I'm weighed down with a lead blanket. I struggle futilely with what little strength I have left in my body. I must fight, but I'm so tired. A hoarse wail fills my ears. They must really be torturing that poor bastard, whoever he is.

_Oh, yeah. Turns out that poor bastard is **me**. _I feel a prick on my arm that barely registers as pain among all the rest of my agony, and I slowly sink into welcome oblivion, my last conscious thought being the desperate hope that I never wake up again.

Shouting. Loud voices when I'm back in my body, or what I think is the throbbing mass that is now my body. I try to open my eyes, but I can't. Terror surges through me. Why can't I open my eyes?

"Mr. Mellark?" a cultured Capitol voice intones, "Mr. Mellark, can you hear me?"

My brain scrambles to respond, but my mouth and throat don't seem to receive the command at first. My lips are having trouble with the words I want to say. I finally force out a breathy hiss, "...Esss...".

"Mr. Mellark, talking may be difficult, as you were intubated, that is you've had a breathing tube in your throat until recently. You're in a hospital in the Capitol. You sustained injuries from bomb blasts in the City Circle in front of the former president's mansion. Do you have any memory of what happened to you there? Try nodding your head if you have any memory of that."

I'm not certain I can nod my head, but I give it try. Fiery pain shoots down my neck. The bombs. I must have been burned by the explosions, that would explain the all over tight pain I feel as though my skin has been pulled from my body and put back on all wrong, but why can't I see or even raise my eyelids to see?

"C..cannn't," I rasp out, "Sss...eee."

"Mr. Mellark, you've sustained 2nd and 3rd degree burns over portions of your back, face and neck. You were fortunate in that your heavy coat and hat protected you from far worse injuries. As it is, we are cautiously optimistic that with time, you will recover to some degree. You are very lucky to be alive, Mr. Mellark..."

"E..eyes? Ss-ee?" Panic floods my body. I need to see. I'm helpless and useless if I can't see!

"Dammit, will you just tell the boy the truth! Oh, I guess that's not something you people have ever been good at," an impatient voice cuts into the haze of my fear. Haymitch! Haymitch is here. Wherever here is. Hospital was it?

"Peeta? Can you hear me?" Haymitch asks, closer now.

"Yesss.." I hiss, "H..mitch. Mm' I ..blind?" I can't even finish the question.

"They're not sure. Try not to panic. They've treated and bandaged your eyes in hopes that in a few days..."

Here the polite voice from before seems to murmur something that I can't make out.

"In a few days, they'll remove the bandages and we'll see what 's what," Haymitch finishes rather lamely.

So, I was likely facing blindness on top of the excruciating pain. Well... that would be tomorrow's problem. It would all be worth it if Katniss and Prim had survived the bombings. My heart lurched in my chest when the thought occurred to me that they might not have.

"K-katniss and Prim..mmm?" I manage to get out.

"Oh, you're quite the hero there, boy," Haymitch replies with what I can only think is a smile in his voice, "They were hurt, but not near as bad as they would have been if it weren't for you. They'll be right as rain in no time thanks to you."

It hurts so much, but I grin back at him. At least, I think I do. I feel myself being pulled away into the deeper darkness of unconsciousness soon after.

A small, soft hand is clasping mine when I awaken again. All is still darkness and pain, but this time I'm expecting it, so it doesn't seem as bad.

"Peeta? Can you hear me?" a soft voice so like the one I love washes over me. Prim? Yes, of course.

"H-hey, Primmm..." I try for more strength in my voice, but it still comes out hoarse and halting, "Y..'re okay? S-sorry I pushed you. Thought I could keep you s-safe..." I trail off unsure if this is a true memory or one of my bizarre imaginings. Pretty sure my mad dash to shove Katniss and Prim against a cement barricade before more bombs exploded in front of the president's mansion really happened.

Prim chortles girlishly, a sound which makes my heart lift, "I should be very angry with you, Peeta, but how can I be? You saved us. Both of us. How did you know? Katniss said you knew it was a trap somehow like in the arenas, but how did you know that more bombs were going to explode?"

"I-I just knew... I saw the p-parachutes hadn't all exploded. D-delayed for m-most casualties," I shrug, and my shoulders scream in agony as the tight, burned skin pulls across my back.

I must have winced, because Prim's hand tightens on mine, "Peeta, be still. They've grafted new skin over the burns on your back. You're still healing."

"I-it does hurt," I reply weakly, the pain making me feel fuzzy.

I hear other voices I don't recognize and then feel the familiar rush of oblivion as the pain washes away into the void of nothingness.

Just before I'm swallowed by unconsciousness, I murmur, "T-tell Katniss I-I..."

I wake up later wondering what I wanted Prim to tell Katniss. I'm not sure what I would have said, what I _wanted_ to say. Tell Katniss I still love her? Tell Katniss that making love with her in Tigris' basement was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and she was right when she said that we should seize the moment to be together? _Oh, yeah. Not sure that was even real. I'll have to ask her about that. Soon. _ I fall asleep again wondering where Katniss is. Is she in the hospital nearby? Prim said they were both okay. Didn't she? I can't remember.

Gradually, I remain conscious for longer periods of time as the days pass, but my eyes are still sealed in a kind of silky bandaging that prevents me from opening them. They must still be giving me morphling or some other drug for pain, because I can't bring myself to move around very much, though I do feel a little more alert. Around the third day, or what I believe to be the third day since I woke up in the Capitol hospital, I wonder why I've been visited by Prim and Haymitch and countless other medical staff, but Katniss has still not appeared at my bedside, as I'd hoped and longed for.

Even Plutarch Heavensbee drops by for a chat that afternoon. It takes him all of five minutes to suggest setting up a televised interview with me for the new liberated Panem broadcast network. The revolution may be winding down, but apparently, there are still propos to produce. The time has come to establish a rapport between the new government and the districts. I wonder if Coin sent Plutarch to talk to me for that purpose. Probably.

"Think of it, my boy," he says with his usual enthusiasm, "All of Panem could see with their own eyes that you survived your ordeal in the City Circle. It's all anyone's been talking about, really. Peeta Mellark, the Victor turned revolutionary, injured protecting his lady-love and her sister in those monstrous bombings at the president's mansion. We could even have Katniss and little Prim in here sitting vigil at your bedside. It would be marvelous for ratings. Now that not everything we produce is mandatory viewing, we have to actually care about what the citizens of Panem want to watch. Can you imagine?" He laughs loud and long, making my head pound. His laughter takes on almost a maniacal quality that batters against me like a fist.

If even the demagog, Plutarch Heavensbee can find his way to my hospital room, then why hasn't Katniss? I hadn't seen her, poor choice of words as I see nothing but blackness these days, I hadn't _spoken_ to her since we'd been huddled together against the cement barricade before the bombs went off. Where was she, and why hadn't she come to see me? Maybe her injuries are graver than Haymitch and Prim let on. Alarm rolls through me at this thought. I'm on the verge of making an excuse to get Plutarch to leave when he drops a bomb of a different sort in my lap.

"Well, what do you say, dear boy?" Plutarch begins cajolingly, "Shall I set it up? I'm off to visit Katniss next, so it would be so simple to arrange a time, as she's just a few steps down the hall."

"Oh. D-down the hall? Y-you're going to see her next?" I repeat his words dumbly.

"I suppose they put you close together given your relationship," Plutarch continues his careless talk, oblivious to my surprise and distraction. _Guess I have the bandages masking most of my face to thank for that._ "Although, as you probably already know, they expect to release her in a few days, but I'm sure she'll be visiting here often after that, eh?"

So- she's well enough to be released soon and has been nearby the entire time and hasn't bothered to come see me? Not even an obligatory thanks-for-saving-my-sister's-life visit. If I want proof that any connection between us, imagined or otherwise, is at an end, this is it. I feel bitter disappointment, and yes... fury course through me. Dark whisperings commence in my throbbing head, each pounding beat seems to tap out a tattoo of venomous, angry hatred and all of it directed toward Katniss.

_She doesn't need you anymore. She's always used you when it suited her purposes. Once again, you served your purpose, so she tosses you aside like the fucked-up mutt you are. When will you fucking learn? Over and over you've let her do this. She never cared, and here's your proof. Wake the fuck up, you idiot. _

Plutarch leaves soon after with promises to return soon to set up an interview. I absently refuse, suggesting I'm not strong enough yet. _No way in hell I'm sitting in the same room pretending undying love and affection with a woman who can't be bothered to even come and check to see if I'm alive or dead!_ Don't think I could manage to convince anyone that I even_ like_ her at the moment.

Who would really still give a flying fuck now anyway, despite what Plutarch said? The revolution is over. The Capitol has fallen. The Star-Crossed Lovers of District 12 were just another lie created by the Capitol._ I am __**done**__ being the Capitol's bitch. Done being Katniss' bitch. Just... done._

I lean back in my hospital bed and let the blackness embrace me. The burns across my shoulders howl in pain, and I welcome it. I welcome anything that will distract me from the roiling anguish brought on by the realization that the woman I've loved most of my life, the woman which I've been willing to sacrifice everything, even my life, repeatedly and gladly, the only person left alive that I love- this person, this woman, cares _**nothing**_ about me.

_Quit your wallowing you blind, pathetic mutt. Next you'll be crawling down the hall on your belly begging her to show you a bit of attention._ _Yeah. Not happening._ I lie there instead desperate for sleep or unconsciousness to end my suffering at least for a little while.

It's a long time before the tension leaves my body, but my dreaming mind must retain its uneasiness...

_Surprisingly, I still dream in full color despite being blind. The vibrant blue of the water and the blinding white of the sand of the beach in the clock arena are too vivid, making me squint and shield my eyes. Looking down I realize I'm standing chest deep in crystalline water, and Katniss is standing next to me in what's left of her undershirt. Even under these circumstances, I feel my traitorous body react to her taut nipples on display under the thin, clingy fabric. I try not to think of the cameras likely trained on them and us at this very moment._

_I know this memory. It's familiar and one of the more pleasurable recollections I have from our time in the Quarter Quell arena. I wonder, not for the first time, why the hijacking bastards chose to leave some of my best memories with Katniss while decimating others._

_Dream Katniss gives me a small smile, "Let's see if you can float on your back, Peeta? It's as good a place as any to start, if you're going to learn to swim."_

"_Uhh.." I hesitate, not wanting Katniss, not to mention all of Panem, to see clear evidence of what I'd been contemplating a few moments earlier._

"_It's alright, Peeta," Katniss reassures, mistaking my embarassment for fear, "I won't let you sink to the bottom. It's easy, see."_

_Katniss moves to lie back in the water. I blink down at her, my eyes traveling from the top of her dark head over her sun-pinked face to land on her dewy lips, just begging to be kissed. Beads of water glisten on her skin, refracting the sunlight, bathing her in a kind of wet radiance almost like fire. So beautiful. My girl on fire- spread before me virtually naked for all the modesty her wet, translucent undergarments offer._

_I move my hand through the water to clasp her braid half-floating with the current close to her head like some exotic sea animal. My fingers tighten, and I wrap her braid around my hand giving a gentle tug, causing her to bob closer to me, her hip brushing against my flank. She stares fixedly up at me, an intent look of awareness spreading across her face. Her arm snakes out under the water's surface to curl around my waist, just above the waistband of my undershorts with her cool fingers ending up splayed across the sensitive skin at my opposite hip, just where my muscles slant downwards toward my groin. I gasp at her intimate touch; zinging arousal surges to my already erect shaft causing it to pulse with my heartbeat. _

_I feel my eyelids droop as I allow my feet to drift off the soft, sandy bottom, and I move to float on my side next to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. We dip and bob alarmingly in the warm current for a few moments before settling, our limbs tangling in an effort to keep from drifting apart. Holding my head above the water, I lean into her, intent on kissing her invitingly wet lips. I can't seem to look anywhere else, think of anything else. Her lips are surprisingly warm and taste of the sea. She laughs, which comes out as soft puffs of air against my lips._

_She raises her arms to wrap them around my neck, pulling me to her, causing us to sink lower into the water, submerging us in the aqueous world beneath the surface. All my senses are muted except the touch of my open lips pressing on hers forming an almost water-tight seal, our tongues writhing together in an erotic dance. I tighten my arms around her to bring our bodies together, my erection pressing into the __intoxicatingly_ soft hollow between her thighs. 

_Suddenly, her arms tighten painfully around my neck. At first I think she's forgotten herself in her own passion, and I feel the corresponding pull of my own arousal, but then she's pulling me down toward the sandy sea floor. Opening my eyes I scan the bluish underwater world and realize we've drifted further out than I'd realized- too deep for me to stand up and touch the bottom to catch my breath. Mild alarm causes me to loosen my grip on Katniss, but her arms hold fast around my neck, and somehow she manages to propel us still further into the shadowy blue depths. I gesture urgently with my hand toward the surface, and a small air bubble leaves her lips as she smiles eerily and shakes her head. She twines herself around me, both arms and legs clinging like seaweed, with no intention of leaving our underwater refuge. My lungs scream for oxygen, as we sink- down, down, down to rest on the sandy seabed. I struggle to see Katniss in the sudden dimness. I can just make out her eyes gleaming at me through the shadows. All is peaceful and quiet before the watery colors fade to black._

**I wake in my Capitol hospital room gasping and trembling...**

_I can't do this anymore_...

Sitting alone in my darkness. I reach up with shaky, blistered fingers and begin to pull at the dressings covering my head and face.

_I have to know. She took my leg. She left me to rot in a Capitol prison where they tortured the sanity and life out of me. She killed my family. Maybe not with her own hands, but because of __**her**__ all these things happened to me. Now- am I to be blind, too?_

I'm panting and sweating as I tug at the surprisingly strong fabric-covering over my eyes. The bandaging starts to pull away, and it feels like it's taking some of the skin on my face with it. _Fine. Add hideously scarred and blind to all my other troubles. Whatever. I just have to get them off! I'm suffocating under all the layers of... of lies._

"Peeta! Stop it! Stop!" Her soft exclamation cuts through my frantic silence. I hear quiet footfalls approach my bed. She rests her hands gingerly on mine, which are still raised in the act of tugging desperately at my bandages. I wrench my battered hands away as if they've been burned anew by fresh fire.

"D-don't touch me!" I scream, "Don't you ever touch me! S-stay away from me!"

"Peeta... please. Please! I-" I think she's sobbing. Her voice sounds wet and broken. I don't care. I _won't_ care.

"Get. Out." I grit, my voice shaking with loathing and rage, "And don't ever come back."

* * *

_Shameless self-promotion: Paint It, Black has been nominated in 2 categories of the Everlark Smut Awards on Tumblr. Humble thanks to the person(s) responsible! Such an honor! I'd like to encourage anyone reading this to pop over and vote. Thanks!_

_**Reviews would also be very much appreciated!**_


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